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Do bear in mind that there is better contactless support in other countries – that's probably one of the reasons Apple Pay is less convenient to use in the US!

In the UK, at least 1% of all transport payments in London use Apple Pay – a pretty huge volume considering. It's also universally accepted wherever there is contactless support (which over here is now becoming ubiquitous).

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Just to add to this, Mastercard and Visa have set a 2020 limit for all card machines in Europe to support contactless payments.

The readers they use for Oyster card, and the specifics of Oyster Card's requirements for the NFC transceiver are probably quite different from VISA/MC. The US has many transit systems that use contactless too. Off the top of my head, from years ago: Atlanta, D.C., New York, Las Vegas, and that was in '06.

You can use contactless across TfL services as of a few months ago.

Sorry, I did mean "contactless credit cards" rather than "generic contactless system" – the word "contactless" is almost exclusively associated with payment cards in the UK.

TfL's network has supported direct use of contactless payment cards for > 6 months now, so Apple Pay (and the Android equivalent) support comes for free.

Having worked in NFC payment terminal development, I think we just speak different lingo.

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